The version is not important, but later versions will have more features so
it's a good idea to get the latest. Follow the instructions at
https://github.com/arq5x/bedtools2 to install, and make sure the programs
are on your path. That is, you should be able to call bedtools from
any directory

A C/C++ compiler:

Windows: Use Cygwin, http://www.cygwin.com. It is probably easiest to select
all of the 'Devel" group items to be installed. In addition, ensure the
zlib items are selected for installation as well (using the search
funciton in the Cygwin install program).

Testing the "current installation" means testing the installation into the
current environment, whether this is the system-wide Python, a virtualenv, or
a conda environment. It requires some additional packages to be installed:

The following command will build Docker two containers -- one for Python 2 and
one for Python 3 -- starting with the base Ubuntu 14.04 container. The first
time the containers are built it will take some time, but they are cached so
subsequent tests will run quickly. Within each of these containers, unit tests
and doctests are run: